Invincible Iron Man #153: Review

Dec 1981

David Michelinie, John Romita Jr.

Story Name:

Light Makes Might!

Review & Comments

Rating:

Invincible Iron Man #153 Review by T Vernon (September 23, 2015)

Comments: Part two of two parts. Last appearance of Bethany Cabe until #193. Living Laser will return in issue #211—and I just noticed his initials qualify him to be a Superman villain. Just sayin’.

Review: Spectacular issue includes a well-paced and thought-out fight scene plus some intense character moments. And the antics of the Living Laser (turning invisible, overloading, etc.) provide the Romita/Layton team with a perfect showcase for some terrific artwork. Wow. Oddest Moment: The illusionary monster is given honors on the cover.

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Synopsis / Summary / Plot

Invincible Iron Man #153 Synopsis by T Vernon

Iron Man awakens from his coma (last issue) to find himself a prisoner in the Heaven’s Hand research facility in Communist Germany. He is hung by cables in front of laser cannon, his feet are lashed to the cannon’s trigger and his gauntlets are immobilized by aviation tape. So explains his captor, his old enemy the Living Laser. After ordering the guards and technicians from the room, he tells the captive hero his story: in AVENGERS #164-166, his power was doubled by Count Nefaria but it left him unable to stop absorbing light energy, leaving him building up to a deadly overload. The Soviets heard of his plight and offered to help: they would drain his laser energy to power their top-secret weapons satellites—so here he is. While LL has been talking, Iron Man has been diverting heat to his gauntlets, melting the tape and leaving him free to blast the cables holding his arms. Shellhead flips forward, jerking the laser cannon’s trigger after he is out of the line of fire, blasting a hole in the mountain…
Meanwhile at the airport, Bethany Cabe pleads with Rhodey to ignore Tony’s orders and fly her seriously ill husband Alex back to the States for medical treatment. After a few minutes, Rhodey complies….
Iron Man rips the cables free and uses them as a whip to bowl over the returning guards just as Living Laser starts shooting at him. To his surprise, Shellhead learns that LL can absorb his repulsor blasts and also bend light to render himself invisible. Though Iron Man cannot see his foe, his sensors still indicate where he is and the hero punches LL’s lights out. The Laser shoots the floor out from under Shellhead who plunges into a storeroom full of wooden crates—which the villain sets afire. The Golden Avenger releases flame-retardant foam to put out the fire, then blasts the ceiling to drop his enemy into the room. The foam resolves itself into a huge monster which turns out to be only a hologram created by the Laser. At this point the villain begins to glow as he goes into the deadly overload; He shoots Shellhead through the shoulder and the scientists rush him into to siphoning chamber. Iron Man turns one of his power storage pods into a grenade and destroys the mechanism. He seizes the overloading villain and hurls him high into the sky where he explodes harmlessly—but spectacularly….
Epilogue: Back in the States, Tony Stark meets with Beth Cabe and she tells him that she will have to stay with her husband to nurse him back to health. The parting is hard on them both and Tony goes back to work to try to recover….